There has been a recent stink around Japanese gaming developer and publisher Konami when news got out that their most anticipated game, Silent Hills, was canned, and the company was going to cut ties with their most well known developer, Hideo Kojima. Academy Award Winning Director Guillermo del Toro was also working on Silent Hills in collaboration with the studio, and at the time it was unknown if del Toro was ever going to be able to break into the gaming industry, but del Toro recently told IGN that he and Kojima were still in talks to do something new together.
The Story Behind Silent Hills
Konami’s Playable Teaser was just a concept project created to tease the real game still in development, Silent Hills. In the interview, del Toro mentioned that Silent Hills was still in the planning stages. The idea was to make the game a psychological horror game, and the Playable Teaser’s single hallway proved that the concept would have been a winning formula.
“We were talking about really pushing the boundaries of the new consoles, and making the game really mess with you head,” said del Toro. Del Toro and Kojima were set to both direct Silent Hills while The Walking Dead star Norman Reedus playing the lead role. It seemed like a match made in heaven until Reedus announced on Twitter that “The hills are no longer silent,” indicating that the show was over and the project was being cancelled.
A Collaboration Between Del Toro and Kojima
In the interview, del Toro is quite forthcoming about how well he and Kojima got along while working together on Silent Hills.
“I love working with Kojima-san. We are still in touch. We are still friends and working into doing something together, but that’s not going to be [Silent Hills],” said del Toro.
He then went on to describe how the two had exchanged ideas about how they wanted the game to play a lot like Metal Gear Solid’s boss battle between Solid Snake and Psycho Mantis. The fight forces players to defeat the boss in a rather untraditional way. In it, Psycho Mantis could ‘read’ the player’s mind by reading the console’s Port A inputs and reacting to them. In order to win, players needed to unplug their controller from Port A and use Port B instead.
Where to Next?
Silent Hills was del Toro’s second attempt to break into the gaming industry. Back in May he said that he may not come back to the form, but now that Kojima is free to pursue other endeavors, it looks like a great time for the two to pull something together.
In the mean time, gamers might be interested in checking out Allison Road, which is another psychological horror game that looks to pick up the ball where Konami forced del Toro and Kojima to drop it with Silent Hills.
